


mirror, mirror

by dopaminekeeper



Series: god is in the detail [2]
Category: ONEUS (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Cunnilingus, Fae & Fairies, Genderfluid Character, M/M, Other, Vaginal Fingering, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:40:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29210523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dopaminekeeper/pseuds/dopaminekeeper
Summary: youngjo hasn't seen his own face in six hundred years
Relationships: Kim Youngjo | Ravn/Son Dongju | Xion
Series: god is in the detail [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2136438
Comments: 11
Kudos: 40





	mirror, mirror

**Author's Note:**

> let's get into it, pals
> 
> dongju in this universe is a fae - he can, and does, change his body at will. he's also genderfluid. myeong hasn't made an appearance yet, but same goes for him. i'm sticking with he/him pronouns for now, but that might change in the future if it feels right for a specific piece.
> 
> cw: this fic is centered around youngjo's self-image issues due to being unable to see his own reflection

Across the centuries of his unlife, Youngjo finds myriad ways to cope with his depersonalization.

As the Goryeo dynasty collapses around them, he finds a decade of solace in the home of a beautiful young couple in Kaesong. They distill soju and let him stay, day after day, year after year, tracing over his brow and lips and jaw and allowing his hunger to subside in their care. When he shatters a mirror, they sweep up the shards and do not say a word.

At the turn of the 16th century, he goes to Florence and seduces a promising young painter named Fillippino. Youngjo lounges in his bed and poses for sketch after sketch in blurry charcoal and at least one full portrait in oils — rich, deep reds and dark, indigo shadows. Fillippino smears paint on Youngjo’s skin and laughs and kisses him and Youngjo kisses back, one eye on the painting, its presence something near to a phantom limb.

In the 1790s, mere decades before he will meet Hwanwoong, he lays on warm grass and takes in the sun as a man he does not love (but who loves him dearly) reads him odes to his eyes, his mouth, his cheeks, his throat. Youngjo savors the words, the image of himself shining clear in his own mind, and he smiles with it. 

When he leaves his poet lifeless and drained on the ground, he takes the poems with him.

It changes, with Hwanwoong. With all of them. They tease Youngjo for his vanity, for his selfish need to be told again and again of his own beauty, but they understand what it is to live centuries and centuries without gazing into one’s own eyes.

Dongju doesn’t understand.

Fae thrive in mirrors, use them as tools for molding and shaping reality around them. Mirrors had been used to control him, before — to trap him and keep him confined to a shape that had pleased his kingdom. He and his brother had managed to break free, shifting through the glass, but it was a near thing.

The coven hadn’t had any use for mirrors before Dongju had arrived, bringing with him his own collection of ornate frames and silver glasses.

An odd pair they make — one with a healthy distrust for his reflection and the other who longs for a simple glance of his own visage in the glass.

So they strike a deal.

——

Even in life, Youngjo was always told he looked best between someone else’s legs, whether his chin was messy with slick or with his lips stretched and full. That didn’t change when he died — charming open a pair of thighs was the quickest fix when he needed assurance that his body, his face, his visage hadn’t distorted past recognition. When he needed to know that he was still pretty, beautiful, fuckable.

Dongju sits on the edge of his chair, a leather wingback that’s been with the coven nearly as long as Dongju himself. He looks every inch the prince he’d been before his abdication, legs spread wide and toes barely grazing the floor, skin smooth and luminous.

On the ground, Youngjo kneels — and yet, by the lines of his shoulders, the way his fingertips trace the backs of Dongju’s calves in little circles, he is not quite deferential.

He presses light, sweet kisses up the inside of Dongju’s thigh, savoring the way the skin gives under his lips. Dongju sighs above him, indulgent.

“Pretty,” he says, low, and Youngjo shivers, pleased.

He can smell Dongju the closer he gets to the apex of his thighs, earthy and potent, entirely unlike the humans Youngjo’s bedded before. No matter what form he takes, Dongju always smells the same — forest floor, forgotten names, spark without kindling.

“Tell me?” Youngjo murmurs, and it’s not a plea, but it’s a near thing. He nips at the join of hip and thigh, slides fingers up the underside of Dongju’s leg, smiles gently at the way it makes Dongju’s breath stutter.

“Not yet.” Dongju doesn’t have to pout for petulance to make itself known in his voice. “You haven’t even started yet.”

Youngjo hums, acquiesces. He noses between Dongju’s legs proper, licking slowly, gently between his folds. Dongju’s thigh jumps under his palm as he follows his tongue with his thumb, sliding it up to rest on his clit, not yet pressing or moving.

“Feels good,” Dongju mumbles, “keep going.” He threads one hand into Youngjo’s hair, and it feels real when Dongju tugs at his scalp. He remembers that his hair is dark, slightly wavy, that it curls at the nape of his neck.

Youngjo does as he’s asked and laps at him, steady and unhurried, drinking in the soft sounds Dongju makes above him. He dips his thumb down to gather more slick and brings it back to Dongju's clit, circling slowly with steady pressure.

"Your mouth —" Dongju starts, cutting himself off on a gasp as Youngjo flicks his tongue up to replace his thumb for a moment before resuming his lazy exploration. “Ah… your lips are really red. S’pretty.”

It’s like a familiar melody, a word finally recalled after sitting itchy on the tip of his tongue. He recalls that the poet had said something similar — _Cupid’s bow, cherry-red —_ and it settles hot at the base of his spine.

Youngjo savors the slick that drips down as he brings his free hand up and slides his fingers in a vee to part Dongju’s folds further, licking between and dipping inside in an easy rhythm. He knows Dongju in this form just as well as in his others, and he knows that Dongju needs to be worked up nice and slow.

“Like that,” Dongju groans, voice crackling like a forest fire, and Youngjo catches his eye as he fucks his tongue inside again, and again, and again, drawing a heady whine out of him. His hair whispers across his face, graces his shoulders like woven silk, gold and shining. Youngjo thinks maybe he shouldn’t be allowed this, that someone like him should never have had someone like Dongju, but he knows that Dongju would hate him for the thought.

Instead, he licks widely over Dongju’s clit, hot and wet and steady, thumb tracing just around his entrance. Dongju keens, curling into himself slightly as the pleasure courses through him in a wave. Youngjo pulls back just enough that his breath falls over sensitive skin.

“Tell me?” he asks, skin prickling and too tight, “please?”

Dongju exhales slowly, tugging on Youngjo’s hair to urge him back into motion. Youngjo maintains eye contact and mouths at Dongju’s clit in a long, filthy kiss, like it’s Dongju’s lips he’s kissing.

“Your eyes are pretty, too,” Dongju manages, free hand thumbing at the corner of Youngjo’s eye. “Dark, and your eyelashes are really long. They match your hair.”

Each word hits Youngjo like a gut punch — he can see flashes of himself in his mind’s eye, superimposed over other faces, over sketches, over paintings. He moans against Dongju’s skin, far past any shame and pleased with the way it makes Dongju’s words stutter.

He slides two fingers into Dongju, slick and easy, perfectly familiar with the curves of Dongju’s body. He licks messily around them, savoring the taste, the clench of hot muscle around his fingers.

Dongju laughs weakly. “Your cheeks are red,” he says, stroking over one with his thumb, “and your, _ah,_ your —”

Youngjo smiles slightly, reaching up to cover Dongju’s hand on his cheek with his own as if to say, _it’s okay._ Dongju goes quiet, eyes slipping shut and mouth falling open.

He works his fingers at a steady pace, groaning against Dongju’s clit when he gets both hands in Youngjo’s hair and tugs hard, no longer keeping his impulses in check. Youngjo’s hazy, caught up in Dongju’s taste and smell and sweet little noises that rise and rise as he clenches harder and faster around Youngjo’s fingers.

“I’m close,” Dongju whines, toes curling and voice pitching up as Youngjo hums and presses at his thigh to open him up even further. His hips push against Youngjo’s mouth and Youngjo lets him — he’d give Dongju anything he wants, he thinks.

He looks up, catches Dongju’s hazy, lidded eyes. Dongju’s brow is furrowed, his cheeks bright red and hair falling like water. Something electric between them snaps as Dongju meets his gaze, sharp ozone in the air.

“Youngjo,” Dongju manages, “you look so… so —”

He comes messy and keening, fingers like claws against Youngjo’s scalp to keep him pressed against him as he rides it out, back arched and shaking until the worst of it has passed.

Dongju pitches forward and takes hold of Youngjo’s face with palms flat on both of his cheeks, wild-eyed and panting.

“Wish I could show you,” he breathes, and Youngjo can feel the tremors in his fingers where they meet his skin. “I want to —”

“It’s okay, _shh,_ it’s okay.” Youngjo runs his hands over Dongju’s open thighs, soothing, placating. “I know, Ju, it’s okay.”

Dongju leans down and kisses him, heedless of his own slick all over Youngjo’s lips and chin, starting frantic and mellowing to something sweeter the longer they move together.

“Thank you,” Youngjo whispers against his lips, because he _is_ grateful that Dongju allows him this, that Dongju wants him enough to indulge him and let Youngjo take care of him in return.

Dongju smiles back, nudging Youngjo’s side with his foot because Youngjo’s sincerity is still too much for him to take without retaliation.

“Shut up,” he giggles, leaning back and sighing. “Ugh, I’m a mess.”

Youngjo rests his cheek on Dongju’s thigh, softer than any silk he’s ever touched, looking up at him like a supplicant to a young god.

“Can I clean you up, then?” he asks, lips twisted in a wry grin.

Dongju laughs weakly and waves a hand in a sort of ‘go ahead’ motion, legs spreading wider to accommodate Youngjo as he kisses and licks his way over bruised and reddened skin. He drinks in Dongju’s sweet little noises as he makes good on his offer, content to have this — to exist in this body, with Dongju’s taste on his tongue and skin under his lips and voice in his ears.

It is enough.

——

He meets Hwanwoong in the spring of 1845 on a ship bound from Busan to Hangzhou.

It isn’t difficult to distinguish human from not at this point in his unlife. It’s in the way the man holds himself — almost too still, like nothing could possibly surprise him. It’s in the way he smells, when Youngjo gets closer — or rather, the way he _doesn’t_ smell, not at all. Humans have all kinds of scents and odors, but vampires smell of absolutely nothing.

Youngjo leans on the railing next to him, confident that his presence won’t be unwelcome. There aren’t any others of their kind on the ship, leading him to believe that this man is either without a coven or very, very far away from them.

“I didn’t expect to see anyone here,” the shorter man says in perfect Italian. Youngjo blinks, mentally shifting back a hundred odd years to access phrases and syntax that sit rusty on his tongue.

“A pleasant surprise, I hope,” he answers. “Youngjo.”

“Hwanwoong.”

“Don’t tell me I’m speaking to the King of Heaven himself,” Youngjo jokes, smiling when Hwanwoong laughs, loud and uninhibited.

“Not quite. I may be old, but I’m not _that_ old,” Hwanwoong replies. “Are you… by yourself?”

“At the moment.” Youngjo leans back against the railing, savoring the spray of salt sea on his skin. “I’ve been in Daegu for a while, but it was time for a change. You?”

Hwanwoong shrugs, looking out over the waves.

“You know how it is,” he says, eventually.

The silence is companionable, long minutes stretching away into the choppy waters. For two as old as them, silence is as much a friend as an enemy.

“Do you have plans in Hangzhou?” Youngjo finally asks.

Hwanwoong’s gaze slides over to him, lazily interested. He shakes his head. Youngjo swallows, unsure about his next words even as they slip off his tongue,

“Would you like to travel together, for a time?”

Hwanwoong smiles, a sleepy tilt of his lips.

“I think I’d like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading - i'm excited to keep trucking along with this series!! kudos/comments are always appreciated <3
> 
> you can follow me here on [twitter](https://twitter.com/dopaminekeeper)! 18+ only


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